Fallen
by Audrey
Summary: Spike: Good or Bad? Black hat or white hat? Soullless or conscious? William the poet or William the Bloody? Loving or just obsessed? An internal conflict from POV Spike. Weird and kind of sad in a melancholy way.


Fallen

Fallen.

_(it doesn't make sense for the first bit, but sit tight...it'll get more reasonable. ~_^)_

Why?

The Slayer inquires. Simultaneously, so do the teeth and fangs in my gut, in the funny way they have a habit of doing. 

I talked to her as if didn't matter, as if she were a robot. Because she doesn't matter, not the way I am now. Spike, our Dear Bloody One, he doesn't matter anymore. Oh, if Dru were to see me now. Even if you were to put a flashing neon sign above my head, she still wouldn't be able to recognize me. She'd just wander around with her hands out like the blind, whimpering "Spike? Where are you? I can't see you..." and I wouldn't even bother to respond, knowing she'd just call me a liar, saying I wasn't really her Spikie, not smelling the way I did of desparity and sad perversion and helplessness. 

So yeah, I told the Slayer why. I admitted it to her bleedin' blonde face. I did it because I, whoever the hell that is, love her. Whatever the hell that means. In summary, boys and girls, this is a very confused man talking to you today. I told her because there's no point keeping a facade when that facade has a) been caught shagging a plastic robot, b) been rendered neutered, and oh, yeah, c) had the sh*t kicked out of it by a blinking _God_. I look like I've been stuffed into a trash compacter then ravaged by wild dogs. I look like someone decided that my eye was a good place to put the blunt end of a baseball bat. Several times. I feel like...

God, who the hell am I? I feel like one of my old victims, sucked empty and dry, lifeless, cold, a dry, hollow corpse lying in some dark soggy alleyway while Spike scampers off cackling in the moonlight, veins throbbing. I'm not William, I can tell ye that much. Not that poncy bugger, that lil' boy thinking that the world was such a beautiful place full of love and light and harmony and all those bloody "effulgent" things. Not that pansy-ass, the wuss, couldn't even stick up for hisself when some bastard decided to spit in his face, couldn't even tell that was an insult he was so convinced. He died, he had to die, he was weak, he's gone now. Gone forever. Not like the idealistic chap would last long anyways, in today's vamp eat vamp world, his sappy smile always on his face. Kuh. Pathetic.

...I wish I was still William.

Rather than be here, pointless, meaningless, soulless, identityless. 

Sitting on a crypt with nowhere to go, nothing to kill but time and hope and pride.

She kisses me and whoopdeedoo, it's what I've been waiting for, right? But it's nothing special. I expected fireworks. I get a college girl's BonneBell lips. I sigh. The "meaning" graph curves downwards and spirals to crash and burn at the zero. Now her lips, pretty as they are, they morph into a pair of cold blue ones, hard, menacing, pale, hiding behind them fangs. Lovely and shining because their owner loves to keep his fangs nice and clean for his dinner. Vicious and cutting from much brutal use. He sinks the teeth in, takes my blood with much fanfare because that's The Bloody's style, and he wipes his mouth with his leather duster sleeve as I topple to the ground. "Eh, I'm ashamed of you, man," he says. "You aren't doing justice to the name Spike. It's time I took m'leave. Find some better things to do. Maybe hook up with Dru. I'll see you about, if you aren't dust." I watch him, glazed lifeless eyes, as I- err...he trounces merrily on his way, skips jauntily over the long-fallen crumpled body of William, Spike, the picture of cocky strength and punkish rebellion. I sort of stay still for a moment, because I have no breath left. 

I've just died twice.

"And my robot?" I ask dully. Maybe that hunk of metal can relate, being not a real person but rather just a shell after all. Not like I have to feel alone in this mess of nonbeing.

"It wasn't real."

No sh*t.

"What you did for me and Dawn, that was real."

I could laugh in her face. Oh. Goody. there's one thing. I see her beautiful form standing there, and a smile flutters on mine or someone else's lips. Spike pokes his head around the crypt door. "Hey Will?"

I point to the corpse lying sad and forlorn on the ground, in his frilly London getup. "He's dead." 

Spike scratches his platinum punk spikes. "Oh. Oh yeah. I forgot. Well, what about you man, you comin'? We can take the world you know." He grins devilishly, full of spunk and energy, of anarchic life, feinting a punch to the left and right. "All fist and fangs and fury. C'mon, man, I'll catch you a drink. Some pretty looking thing."

I shake my head tiredly. "Nah, you go on without me," I say wearily, my head pounding a headache. God that Glory bint hits hard.

Spike turns his head to one side. "Y'sure?"

Buffy casts one last grateful, but distantly cordial look over her shoulder. I look at her face. "Yeah, man, I'm sure," I reply, my whole being just _beat_. 

I'll follow her like a puppy dog, the outcast Scoobie, I'll lick her boots 'til we reach the end of the earth. I'll lay my body down on the muddy ground so she can walk on me, just to feel the sensation of the bottom of her feet. It's all I got left now. 

"All right," says Spike. "But don't expect to see me again."

I nod again, eyes still on the Slayer's eyes, her chin, her nose, her lips, wondering if she's worthy, if she's enough.

Buffy walks away from me, to meet her friends, to live her life. Slowly, the body of the dead boy Will disintegrates away into nothingness, and Spike and Buffy walk out the door, out of my life, at the same time, but not together.

I lay back down on my coffin. I'll be here a while. 


End file.
